Generally small businesses that provide a service do not have an easy and effective way to measure the performance of their business and employees in order to become a more effective business. Business owners and managers lack the means to track key information that is important to their success. Furthermore, businesses may have the impression that they are operating at optimal conditions and producing maximum net profit, but they do not have the data to affirm their success or recognize additional areas of opportunity.
For example, in the automotive service and repair industry, business owners typically wait until they receive a financial statement at the end of the month or end of quarter to determine whether or not they have improved their bottom line or met their financial objectives. Thus, business owners cannot make key staffing, training, and advertising decisions until after a problem has affected their business sales and productivity for quite some time. They cannot be proactive in their business analysis and approach. Moreover, they do not have an easy way to measure return on advertising dollars and trace where their best customers come from quantifying their advertising dollars.
In addition, business owners do not have the data to clearly detect problems and identify the appropriate source. Without the data, business owners do not know what type of corrective steps to take, which is most important or which order to make them. For example, business owners cannot identify whether changes to sales or technician training will solve the problem or whether increasing headcount or advertising is the better solution. More importantly, without this pseudo-realtime data, businesses do not know if the changes they have implemented have had a positive or negative effect until it is too late.